11/06/2015

A new statistics and spatial tool to support in situ conservation of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture called 'Complementa' has been developed and presented for the first time to plant breeders and researches during a regional workshop organized  in Pretoria, South Africa, by the Southern African Development community (SADC) and Bioversity International.

Complementa is the first of a set of three tools designed to support in-situ conservation of plant genetic resources. This tool, elaborated within the Treaty Programme to support capacity development (CAPFITOGEN), is designed to perform complementarity and coverage analysis for target crop or wild relative species in order to determine the most important zones (represented in the form of cells in a grid) or protected areas in terms of taxonomic-genetic richness conservation and the degree of protection.

"Such statistical analysis will help in taking important decisions about areas with a high probability of having landraces or crop wild relatives and which could be considered as future protected areas for an efficient in situ conservation,"  said Mauricio Parra Quijano, Treaty consultant and coordinator of the Programme.  "The tool can also be used to determine the current degree of protection provided", he added.

Complementa can also support the optimization of activities related to ex situ conservation such as germplasm collecting in non-represented environments, by making it possible to target areas with the highest concentrations of genus, species or varieties.

Additionally, the Treaty’s new tool can analyze both the data on protected areas provided by the user and the maps of protected areas from world databases (www.protectedplanet.net). Complementa is now available with the CAPFITOGEN toolkit and can be downloaded online.

Crop Wild Relatives and Food Security

The presentation of Complementa at the workshop in Pretoria was a direct contribution of the International Treaty to the project called, 'Enhancing the link between in situ conservation and use of crop wild relatives (CWR) in the SADC region to underpin regional food security and mitigate predicted adverse impact of climate change.'

The activities supported by the CAPFITOGEN Programme are funded by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), and contribute to both the implementation of the Programme of Work on Sustainable Use and the Global Information System of the International Treaty in the form of tools and technical training. The initial set of tools was developed and tested with users in 2012 and was presented at several regional workshops in Latin American and later also translated into English and Portuguese with the corresponding documentation. Training support is available from the Treaty’s Secretariat for wider use and dissemination.

More information on the Treaty’s Information Tools: capfitogen

Download Complementa: http://www.capfitogen.net/en/access/download-from-internet/